We learn from patterns

So in December my family went to Mexico before Christmas for a fun vacation when we got back I started having contractions to the point where I needed to be on self prescribed bedrest for a few days. This worried me so I went to the doctors to which they gratefully let me know that nothing was wrong with the baby, that it must be my MS somehow acting up. This was comforting to know because I was only a few weeks along and nowhere close to ready to be having contractions. This helped me be more aware of my body and has helped me take it more easy throughout this pregnancy. I figured that the stress of going on a vacation is what triggered the contractions so I've tried to stay low stress ever sense. Now the trip to Mexico was fun and didn't seem very stressful at the time but going on vacation with six kids even when it's super fun can create literal stress, stuff that you're not even conscious of, because during the trip to Mexico I had a great time I didn't feel particularly stressed not no more stress than a normal trip with my whole family. But when I came back and had contractions I concluded that the stress must have induced them.
Well like I said being the mother of six is not always stress free but I have been able to be bedrest free since that trip. We have gone on 2 road trips just up north to visit family and I have been fine. I have gone on the trip to Canada that actually was kind of a stress, our flight got delayed we had a whole extra day of travel and then I got hit with allergies so bad that I didn't get to enjoy much of Canada. None of these events caused contractions, they caused stress and tiredness but no contractions.
This week we decided to purchase a new car to replace our trusty old Corolla that is now not so reliable. My husband found his dream car on an amazing deal about an hour and a half away from us, we are bargain shoppers we found the car on craigslist which we've done many times.  My husband is really good at picking out good cars I trust his judgment... we decided to as a family Drive The hour and a half and pick up the car... The car ended up being sold in a shady part of town and as my husband checked out the car I kept our kids in our suburban and just hung out in the car for a while, we then got the car hurried and got some food, tried to find a bathroom...eventually found one and drove home. Well guess what the next day I started having bad contractions again to where I had to be on self prescribed bedrest.
What connects these two events?What caused serious contractions?
Fear! These are the two incidences where I had my children with me and I was in a less comfortable possibly less safe environment. Neither environment was really a terrible place and in both times I didn't feel scared consciously but subconsciously realizing I had my six children that I was responsible for created a fight or flight hormone inside me that afterwards created enough something  that started the contractions, this is not fact or science this is just what I am trying to piece together out of the two times that I have had to be on bedrest for my contractions, opposed to all the other times that I have been stressed out with my family yet not had contractions. My conclusion is that fear for my children's safety triggers such a strong response that it creates contractions. I'm glad to figure this out because next time I am in a situation that could make me nervous for my children I can hopefully create a logical solution that will help me remain calm so that I do not induce fake or real contractions.

Still pregnant 😀

Well, I am 23 weeks pregnant.  I am over the worst of regular pregnancy, that is, morning sickness.
As far as MS goes, there are many days that I forget I have it. But there are times that I can't denie are different.  It seems like anything that gets me down like being sick takes a longer time to recover. For example I went on a trip last week to Canada and got hit with allergies on the plane to Canada, allergies usually don't bother  me that much they are just annoying but on this trip they wiped me out where I felt terrible, and even with allergy medicine that was nondrowsy all I could really do was rest. I got better but it took a lot more out of me than it usually does.
Going on any kind of a trip seems to require a lot of relaxing after the trip is done. I have been aware to give myself a whole day of resting after a trip to get back to normal which seems like more than enough time but after this trip my body's telling me I need to take it easier for longer than just the day. I am still trying to learn how to read my body because I feel like I'm fine and I can do anything again and then I get hit really hard with tiredness or weakness really fast. I really am trying not to push myself too hard but it's hard when your body goes from fine too too much in a moment.
 I had three things on my must do list today take a shower go to one store and then go to another store,  other than making sure my children eat that's about all that was on my list of have to's today.  First thing I chose to do is take a shower I felt faint in the shower and had to lay down for an hour ☹ I finally had enough energy to get up and going again and was able to go to two stores but had to hurry the kids in and tell my four-year-old that no I couldn't go outside and ride bikes with her because my legs where to weak and we're going to give out any moment. Luckily most days are not like this most days are fine today's been rough though.

On a side note, my Family has been begging me to get a handicap plaquerd for the car,  which I did not want to do I felt bad when On good days I can go and run 2 miles I shouldn't be using a handicap parking spot . But I realized it's a choice when to use a handicap parking spot and when not to so, I finally gave in and got a handicap Plaquetd.  When I am feeling weak I use it, when I'm feeling strong I don't .   Something I never realized before was how many people really do use handicap parking spots, I've been surprised at how many times I've wanted to use the handicap parking and it's been all full, but maybe that's because I live in a retirement community and probably a third of the community also uses handicap parking 😂.

Well here hoping I  we will quickly learn how to balance my body's needs and wants  not be in bed all day but not working too hard that I get weak.

MS while pregnant can be done but not easy!

Being pregnant with MS is not a walk in the park.

So this is my seventh pregnancy I've had relatively easy pregnancies for all of my pregnancies though the last two I did have a significant amount of morning sickness or as we women like to collect "all day sickness".
Well I don't know what factors are causing what symptoms because I'm also 13 years older than when I had my first pregnancy so I know getting older makes pregnancy harder but there are a few things different with this pregnancy than the rest.
My MS symptoms have not gotten worse, but they are there and the tiredness that comes with MS which had kind of gone away (with medication) has definitely come back again I don't know how much of the tiredness is MS and how much of it is pregnancy how much of it is being 33... I am very tired and weak.  Weak is the big struggle for me, I have a lot less energy and strength this time around, and that is really hard for me.

That being said it is worth it all to bring a life into the world. I am so excited to meet this little one.
I am extra excited because it is my last, I can now have my whole family here, I can get rid of maturity cloths, and be done with this stage in life. Having MS has made it easier for me to be sure I  am done, but I always wanted 7 kids and am so glad to have them all here soon.

Pregnant with MS

So I've been hesitant to blog recently because I found out I'm pregnant and wasn't telling anybody so I didn't really want to put it online that I was pregnant until I told family and friends first. Well we decided to announce in our Christmas greetings card that we are having another one so if friends can know I guess the worldwide Internet can too.
When I found out I had MS one of the first questions was can we still have more children? To which I was super glad to find out that not only can you be pregnant with MS, it is encouraged because while you're pregnant symptoms (can) go away. Doctors theorize that your body is working so hard on creating another life that it stops attacking itself.
That being said it is still a little bit scary because you have to go off of medication, which makes me wonder what if symptoms come back.
I have six children,this pregnancy is planned to be our last. I have been blessed with very good pregnancies no real complications with any of my pregnancies (except after my second child was born and we were trying for number three I did have a tubal pregnancy which resulted in a tubal rupture, but amazingly I was able to have four more children after that easily.)
So even though the doctors encourage me to get pregnant, and I have good pregnancies I'm still really nervous.
The week I found out I was pregnant was the week of Thanksgiving. The day after Thanksgiving I started having some severe abdominal pains, like the pains I had with my tubal pregnancy. That scared me so much Dr. ordered up an ultrasound to which we found there was no baby in the fallopian tube it must've just been indigestion from too much Thanksgiving food yeah!Things where fine again. Fast forward a month. We went on a trip to Mexico the week before Christmas, which was really fun and rewarding because we were able to provide food for some families that where in need .For anyone that has children you know that a family vacation is stressful, especially with a toddler that wants to touch everything that he shouldn't. And if you look into MS you'll know that relapses or episodes can be triggered from stress. Well I think that trip that was really nice had just enough stress that it triggered an episode and my hand started going numb again. This worried me a little but not too much I decided when I got home I would just take it easy. But I wanted my house to be back in order and needed to go to the store to buy food and to do laundry and cleaning… I did not relaxed the day after. The next day was Friday morning I started having lower back pain that felt a lot like minor contractions. I told my husband and the kids that I needed to have a day off and just lay down all day not to stress about anything. I did, the contractions did not go away they did not get better they got a little worse. Now I was worried about miscarriage. Thankfully I was able to get a good nights sleep and Saturday morning I woke up feeling better and numbness was slightly better and if I kept laying down the contractions were minimal. It's now Wednesday after Christmas and if I lay down all day I can keep the contractions under control but if I get up at all I have contractions that quickly get painful. Wednesday was the first day my doctor was available so I called him this morning (Wednesday) and I had an appointment. Baby is doing great looks like the symptoms are more MS attacks and not issues with the pregnancy. Which given the two choices I'm glad it's just MS and not problems with the pregnancy.

I can do hair.

 So before my MS was being treated  my left hand was practically useless for a few months.I couldn't lift my hand up over my head very well. Simple things like getting dressed, and buttoning my pants took much longer. With basic tasks becoming a lot harder it made it really hard for me to want to do anything extra,  washing and doing my hair was terrible, it felt like I was scrubbing straw because of the numbness in my hand. I would still  wash my hair but had no desire to do it afterwards. Even worse than that my three daughters wanted me to do their hair but I couldn't,  we even cut my youngest girls lovely curly locks off so it would be easier for me to handle. After a while I got sick of looking at myself in the mirror, and started brainstorming as to  a new hairstyle I could have that wouldn't take too much work. In the meantime  my doctors were able to get me on a good prescription  my medicine started kicking in and I've been able to get back all of my hand mobility. I have to constantly keep tabs on my left hands capabilities and I am often moving it in different ways just to make sure I still can. I found a cute short hairdo that is really probably more flattering than my previous hair do anyway, it's super easy to do so hopefully if my hands don't work well in the future I can still do my hair.  This Sunday marked a special day for me because all three of my girls head cute hairdos one had crimpy hair that her sister had helped her with the night before. One had the cutest little French  braid that I did yay!  And the oldest had beautiful curls that I was able to do. I wanted to take a picture but life got busy and I totally forgot.  But I'm writing it down here so at least I can member the great feeling I had of being able to do my girls hair again. It amazes me how much you can  take things for granted but once you are unable to do those things and then have those abilities restored what a blessing it is being able to do the simple things once again. I am so grateful for all that my body can now do.

Life is going well

I find that when life is going well I like to pretend that MS is not real, not talk about it, not think about it, and not blog about it...and what a blessing that I can be doing so well that I can forget about it sometimes. In a lot of ways I would say I am doing better than normal, I am still working on developing my talents, and have regained my passion for painting, I have a few paintings planned for Christmas gifts, now the hard part is finding the time to paint and still do all I need to do as a mom. It is easy to spend hours painting, but kids don't usually let me have hours to myself, but I have found I can still get some good painting time in while the little ones are napping, and if the older ones come home while I am still painting, they love it, and I can still help with home work while I paint.

This year for Thanksgiving I am thankful for a new thing that I have taken for granted in the past...modern medicine, I am amazed that I can have had MS found and treated to the point where it is only 2 pills a day and still a bit of numbness (that may never go away) otherwise I forget that I am any different. This is because of the gift of modern medicine.  Even 10 years ago MS was way worse.  So this year I am so thankful that people have worked so hard to make a medication for me to help make my life so normal.

Things are falling into place

So things have been going well, I feel like I'm getting in the groove, although whenever I say things are well and I'm getting in the groove it  feels like something happens to shake things up a bit, nonetheless I do feel like things are good now. My body has gotten used to the medication and I have no side effects yay.  I was even able to go without eating for a day doing my religious fast and my stomach was hungry which is normal during the fast but I did not feel sick, which I personally counted as a little miracle.
 As far as the diet I was on, I do not know what I will do with it I have not tried it again since I was feeling so sick on it, and as I reflect on how things went for those 3 weeks of that diet the only real positive result I found from being on the diet was great weight loss, which at first was exciting for me because my baby is now one years old and I'm trying to shed the baby weight. But good weight loss and terrible stomach pains do not equal healthy in my mind.  So for know I will not use the special auto immune diet, but will stick with my normal diet, but if I ever feel like I should use that diet I will try it again. 
My hands are still numb but super functional I can type a little bit I've started practicing piano not very good but I wasn't good before. I started painting again which I haven't done in many many years, that is the picture I painted in the previous post. It feels like getting MS and being Limited in my abilities has strengthen my desire to do as much as I can and to try new things. For a while there I used to run half marathons to help me lose weight and get into shape after babies,  by the way I have six kids so losing baby weight is a regular part of my life. I ran my last half marathon about 2 1/2 years ago and had no motivation to run any more, but after having my legs numb and walking up the stairs being a challenge and then having my body function normal again, with medication I now want to prove that I can run a half marathon again.  I have started running a mile at a time and would like to improve my time to a 12 minute mile. Once I get my speed up then I will start running more miles. There is a fun race called the Baker's dozen half marathon in December I don't know if I'll be ready to race by then but if I am that would be a fun race.
Something that is actually quite nice about all of this is remembering the parable of the talents in the New Testament I haven't necessarily been hiding my talents in the sand but I had let being a mom prioritize my life over developing my talents. Through this experience of getting MS and loosing physical ability and then gaining most of that ability back I have gained a new desire to develop my talents, and I have realized that I don't have to pick between being a mom or developing talents I can develop my talents while being a mom. In fact I can do it with my children, helping them find joy in the things I love to do like painting, running, singing and playing the piano. 
Life is hard, but I am finding that having a positive attitude, really does bring joy into any situation, and I am so glad that I have faith in God, because that faith is the foundation of my positive attitude, and with that attitude life is good.